Aerojet was an American
rocket
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entire ...
and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in
Rancho Cordova, California
Rancho Cordova is a city in Sacramento County, California, United States which was incorporated in 2003. It is part of the Sacramento Metropolitan Area. The population was 64,776 at the 2010 census. In 2010 and 2019, Rancho Cordova was named ...
, with divisions in
Redmond, Washington
Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located east of Seattle. The population was 73,256 at the 2020 census, up from 54,144 in 2010.
Redmond is best known as the home of Microsoft and Nintendo of America.
With an a ...
,
Orange
Orange most often refers to:
*Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis''
** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower
* Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum ...
and
Gainesville in Virginia, and
Camden, Arkansas. Aerojet was owned by
GenCorp. In 2013, Aerojet was merged by GenCorp with the former
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to form
Aerojet Rocketdyne
Aerojet Rocketdyne is an American manufacturer of rocket, hypersonic, and electric propulsive systems for space, defense, civil and commercial applications. Headquartered in Sacramento, California, the company is owned by Aerojet Rocketdyne Hold ...
.
History
Aerojet developed from a 1936 meeting hosted by
Theodore von Kármán
Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...
at his home. Joining von Kármán, who was at the time director of
Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
, were a number of Caltech professors and students, including rocket scientist and astrophysicist
Fritz Zwicky and explosives expert
Jack Parsons
John Whiteside Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons; October 2, 1914 – June 17, 1952) was an American Aerospace engineering, rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelema, Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology ...
, all of whom were interested in the topic of
spaceflight
Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in o ...
. The group continued to occasionally meet, but its activities were limited to discussions rather than experimentation.
Their first design was tested on August 16, 1941, consisting of a small cylindrical solid-fuel motor attached to the bottom of a plane. Takeoff distance was shortened by half, and the
USAAF
The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...
placed an order for experimental production versions.
Founding
Some aspects of the early operation of the company were described by Kármán in his autobiography:
Theodore von Kármán
Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...
with Lee Edson (1967) ''The Wind and Beyond'', Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emil ...
On March 19, 1942, Haley obtained our incorporation papers and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation was launched. I was President; Malina was Treasurer; and Haley was Secretary. We had three vice-presidents: Parsons
Parsons may refer to:
Places
In the United States:
* Parsons, Kansas, a city
* Parsons, Missouri, an unincorporated community
* Parsons, Tennessee, a city
* Parsons, West Virginia, a town
* Camp Parsons, a Boy Scout camp in the state of Washingto ...
, Summerfield, and Forman. We issued stock to ourselves, and for a brief time Haley seemed to own the entire corporation because, being the only man in the group with cash, he actually put up all the initial capital. We opened offices on East Colorado Street in Pasadena ... we moved to ... 285 West Colorado Street...Thus began ... the world’s largest manufacturer of rockets and propellants. In only twenty years it was to grow from six people with a capitalization of $1200 into a 700-million-dollar a year business, a staff of nearly 34,000, and a key role in the modern defense picture of the United States.[
Kármán soon relinquished the presidency: "Haley became Aerojet’s second president on August 26, 1942. He proved to be an incredible administrator."]
The company expanded and required new facilities: "In October, fifteen employees were drawing paychecks. By December we had expanded to about one hundred and fifty employees and in January 1943 we moved to
Azusa, California
Azusa (Tongva: ''Asuksa-nga'') is a city in the San Gabriel Valley, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County, California, United States, located 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
Its population was 50,000 in 2020, a ...
."
[ In 1943 the Army Air Forces finally placed a full order, demanding that 2000 rockets be delivered before year's end.
The difficulty of starting out in an industry with no history explains how the founders lost control:
]Unhappily for us, no bank would lend us money; bankers hadn’t yet come to think of rocketry as a stable business.
In the spring of 1944 the officers instructed Haley to seek out new sources of assistance. General Tire was one of his clients and that company showed an interest in Aerojet and began negotiations. In January 1945 General Tire acquired half the stock for $75,000. Parsons and Forman also sold their shares, so that, by October, General Tire had control of the majority of Aerojet.[
Kármán resisted the offers presented to him, until in 1953 when a sizable ]scholarship
A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need.
Scholarsh ...
fund was offered to be set up as a memorial to his sister Josephine de Karman.
General Tire
The company also invested in pure rocket research, developing both a liquid-fueled design and a new solid-fueled design based on a rubber binding agent in partnership with General Tire. In the immediate post-war era, Aerojet downsized dramatically, but their JATO
JATO (acronym for jet-assisted take-off) is a type of assisted take-off for helping overloaded aircraft into the air by providing additional thrust in the form of small rockets. The term ''JATO'' is used interchangeably with the (more specifi ...
(jet-assisted take-off) units continued to sell for commercial aircraft operating in hot-and-high conditions.
By 1950, their research into the rubber binder had led to much larger engines and then to the development of the Aerobee sounding rocket
A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...
. Aerobee was the first US-designed rocket to reach space (albeit not orbit) and completed over 1,000 flights before it was retired in 1985. Aerojet designed and built a total of 1,182 engines for all four incarnations of the Titan
Titan most often refers to:
* Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn
* Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology
Titan or Titans may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Fictional entities
Fictional locations
* Titan in fiction, fictiona ...
rockets, which were used for civilian projects ranging from Gemini's manned flights to solar system explorations including Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and s ...
, Voyager
Voyager may refer to:
Computing and communications
* LG Voyager, a mobile phone model manufactured by LG Electronics
* NCR Voyager, a computer platform produced by NCR Corporation
* Voyager (computer worm), a computer worm affecting Oracle ...
, and Cassini. The newly formed US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
used Aerojet as the primary supplier on a number of their ICBM projects, including the Titan
Titan most often refers to:
* Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn
* Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology
Titan or Titans may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Fictional entities
Fictional locations
* Titan in fiction, fictiona ...
and Minuteman
Minutemen were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute's notice, hence the name. Mi ...
missiles. They also delivered propulsion systems for the US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
's submarine-launched Polaris
Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris ( Latinized to ''Alpha Ursae Minoris'') and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude that ...
missile. A new plant was set up in Rancho Cordova that took over most rocket construction, while the original Azusa offices returned primarily to research. One of Azusa's major projects was the development of the infra-red detectors for the Defense Support Program
The Defense Support Program (DSP) is a program of the United States Space Force that operated the reconnaissance satellites which form the principal component of the ''Satellite Early Warning System'' used by the United States.
DSP satellite ...
satellites, used to detect ICBM launches from space. The new research arm was formed as Aerojet Electro-Systems Corp., and after purchasing a number of ordnance companies, Aerojet Ordnance was created as well. A new umbrella organization oversaw the three major divisions, Aerojet General.
President Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
's challenge to place a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s led to increased civilian work at Aerojet. Previously, they had repeatedly lost contracts for large engines for the Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; ...
and Nova
A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...
boosters, being designed in the late 1950s, often to their rival Rocketdyne
Rocketdyne was an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, California, Canoga Park, in the western San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles, in southern California.
The Rocke ...
, but in the end were selected to develop and build the main engine for the Apollo Command/Service Module
The Apollo command and service module (CSM) was one of two principal components of the United States Apollo spacecraft, used for the Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The CSM functioned as a mother shi ...
. In 1962 they were also selected to design a new upper-stage engine to replace the cluster of five J-2s used on the Saturn second stage in the post-Apollo era, but work on their resulting M-1 M1, M01 or M-1 may refer to:
Arts, entertainment & media
* WD-M01 Turn A Gundam, a mecha from the anime ''Turn A Gundam''
* M-1 (rapper), one half of hip hop duo Dead Prez
* Korg M1, a keyboard synthesizer
* Leica M1, a 1959 35 mm camera mo ...
design was ended in 1965 when it became clear the public's support for a massive space program was waning.
During this period, Aerojet built a large concrete pad in San Ramon, CA, for the purpose of rocket engine testing for the space program. Before it got used, President Johnson and NASA decided to move these activities to the upcoming space center in Houston, TX.
Similar work continued in the 1970s, delivering the second-stage motor for the MX missile, the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) for the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...
, and the first US-designed cluster bomb
A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehic ...
s. A contract for 30-mm ammunition for the A-10 Thunderbolt II
The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II is a single-seat, twinjet, twin-turbofan, straight wing, straight-wing, Subsonic aircraft, subsonic attack aircraft developed by Fairchild Aircraft, Fairchild Republic for the United States Air Force ...
was so extensive that new branch plants were set up in Downey and Chino in 1978. Aerojet also purchased a number of other firms over this period, and their plant in Jonesborough, TN
Jonesborough (historically also Jonesboro) is a town in, and the county seat of, Washington County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. Its population was 5,860 as of 2020. It is "Tennessee's oldest town".
Jonesborough is part of the J ...
developed the use of depleted uranium
Depleted uranium (DU; also referred to in the past as Q-metal, depletalloy or D-38) is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope than natural uranium.: "Depleted uranium possesses only 60% of the radioactivity of natural uranium, ...
ordnance. To this day they are the primary supplier of these weapons. Their electronics and ordnance divisions also collaborated on the SADARM 8" anti-armor artillery round, but this was never put into production.
The 1980s saw a brief revival of the aerospace business during President Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
's Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballist ...
program, but the company shrank during the late 1980s and into the 1990s.
1990s
As Aerojet downsized, many of their industrial plants were idled, and the company looked for ways to capitalize them. Their massive investment in chemical mixing equipment used to build their solid-fuel rockets was later leased to third parties, notably pharmaceutical companies, under the name Aerojet Fine Chemicals. The division was later sold. Aerojet Real Estate was more direct in its actions, leasing entire Aerojet buildings and selling off undeveloped Aerojet land. It owned approximately 12,600 acres (51 km2), located 15 miles (24 km) east of downtown Sacramento.
The remaining research and development sections of Aerojet were organized into the Aerospace and Defense division (ADS). They continued to develop and produce liquid-fuel, solid-fuel, and air-breathing engines for strategic and tactical missiles, precision strike missiles, and interceptors required for missile defense. Product applications for defense systems included strategic and tactical missile motors; maneuvering propulsion systems; attitude control systems; and warhead assemblies used in precision weapon systems and missile defense, as well as airframe structures required on the F-22 Raptor
The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is an American single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). As the result of the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program, t ...
aircraft and fire suppression systems for military and commercial vehicles. Their space-related products included liquid-fuel engines for expendable and reusable launch vehicle
A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and syste ...
s, upper-stage engines, satellite propulsion, large solid boosters, and integrated propulsion subsystems.
Aerojet qualified a 4.5-kW Hall effect thruster
In spacecraft propulsion, a Hall-effect thruster (HET) is a type of ion thruster in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field. Hall-effect thrusters (based on the discovery by Edwin Hall) are sometimes referred to as Hall thr ...
electric propulsion system based on technology licensed from the Busek Corporation. Aerojet is under contract to Lockheed Martin to provide the first two shipsets of the new thruster system for the next generation Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) system, a US Air Force program. Research into the next generation of advanced or "green" monopropellant engines met with mixed success in the 1990s. HAN engines developed under contract to the US Air Force and Missile Defense Agency provided proof of concept.
Recent history
Aerojet was owned by GenCorp, which is headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California
Rancho Cordova is a city in Sacramento County, California, United States which was incorporated in 2003. It is part of the Sacramento Metropolitan Area. The population was 64,776 at the 2010 census. In 2010 and 2019, Rancho Cordova was named ...
. GenCorp was known as the General Tire & Rubber Company until 1984. On April 27, 2015, the corporate name of the company was officially changed from GenCorp, Inc. to Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. to honor the company's heritage of continuous product innovation and mission success and to recognize its significant contributions to national defense and space exploration for more than 70 years.
From 2002, Aerojet grew steadily to more than 3,500 employees in 2008. Aerojet's rocket engine for the Delta II second-stage completed a record 268 successful mission launches since 1960 on February 6, 2009.
NASA chose Aerojet to provide the primary design and development of Orion (spacecraft)
Orion (officially Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle or Orion MPCV) is a partially reusable crewed spacecraft used in NASA's Artemis program. The spacecraft consists of a Crew Module (CM) space capsule designed by Lockheed Martin and the E ...
propulsion systems for the Constellation program
The Constellation program (abbreviated CxP) was a crewed spaceflight program developed by NASA, the space agency of the United States, from 2005 to 2009. The major goals of the program were "completion of the International Space Station" an ...
. In November 2010, Aerojet was selected by NASA for consideration for potential contract awards for heavy lift launch vehicle
A heavy-lift launch vehicle, HLV or HLLV, is an orbital launch vehicle capable of lifting between
(by NASA classification) or between (by Russian classification) into low Earth orbit (LEO).50t payloads" , operational heavy-lift launch vehicl ...
system concepts and propulsion technologies.
In July 2012, Gencorp announced that it was buying Aerojet's competitor, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne; the acquisition was completed in 2013.
Florida facility and canal
Aerojet solid fuel technology was under consideration for use in Apollo's Saturn V first stages. In 1963, the U.S. Air Force provided Aerojet General with $3 million in funding to start construction of a manufacturing and testing site several miles southwest of Homestead, Florida
Homestead is a city within Miami-Dade County in the U.S. state of Florida, between Biscayne National Park to the east and Everglades National Park to the west. The population was 80,737 as of the 2020 census. Homestead is primarily a Miami s ...
. Aerojet acquired the land for the plant less than five miles from Everglades National Park
Everglades National Park is an American national park that protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades in Florida. The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and the largest wilderness of any kind east ...
. A facility was constructed where the motors could be built and tested (). SW 232nd Avenue was renamed "Aerojet Road".
A monolithic rocket motor was designed, which was too big to be transported by rail. A plan was devised where the rocket motors would be transported by barge to Cape Canaveral. To facilitate barges, a canal was dug (C-111) and a drawbridge
A drawbridge or draw-bridge is a type of moveable bridge typically at the entrance to a castle or tower surrounded by a moat. In some forms of English, including American English, the word ''drawbridge'' commonly refers to all types of moveable ...
installed for the U.S. Highway 1 crossing at mile marker 116 (). This canal became the southernmost freshwater canal in Southeast Florida and was dubbed the "Aerojet Canal". Efforts are being made to remediate the long term environmental damage caused by the canal, which include the redirection of fresh water from Taylor Slough
Taylor Slough, located in the southeastern corner of the Florida Everglades, along with the much larger Shark River Slough farther to the west, are the principal natural drainages for the freshwater Everglades and the essential conduit for providi ...
and thus Florida Bay
Florida Bay is the bay located between the southern end of the Florida mainland (the Florida Everglades) and the Florida Keys in the United States. It is a large, shallow estuary that while connected to the Gulf of Mexico, has limited exchange ...
to Barnes Sound
Barnes Sound is a bay located at the southern tip of Florida, between Key Largo and the mainland.
Two United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the ...
. Additionally, a concrete silo was constructed for the rocket motor, 180 feet deep into the Everglades.
Aerojet needed a cylindrical chamber that would withstand the force and power a space-faring rocket would cause. Aerojet subcontracted the fabrication of 260-inch-diameter, 24m long chamber. The chambers were designed in short-length, meaning half the size of what the final product would be, hence the names given to the test rockets, SL-1, SL-2 and SL-3. Both motors used a propellant burning rate and nozzle size appropriate for the full length design and were capable of about 1,600,000 kgf thrust for 114 seconds. The large amount of propellant needed for such a rocket was manufactured at the Everglades plant.
An ignition motor, a knocked-down Polaris missile B3 first stage known as “Blowtorch,” was used to jump-start the motor. Between Sept. 25, 1965 and June 17, 1967, three static test firings were done. SL-1 was fired at night, and the flame was clearly visible from Miami 50 km away, producing over 3 million pounds of thrust. SL-2 was fired with similar success and relatively uneventful. SL-3, the third and what would be the final test rocket, used a partially submerged nozzle and produced 2,670,000 kgf thrust, making it the largest solid-fuel rocket ever.
Problems arose during the third test when, near burnout, the rocket nozzle was ejected, causing propellant made of hydrochloric acids to be spread across wetlands in the Everglades and a few crop fields and homes in Homestead. Many residents of Homestead complained about the damage done, which included paint damage to their cars and the death of thousands of dollars worth of crops.
By 1969, NASA had decided to go with liquid-fueled engines for the Saturn V rockets, causing the workers of the Everglades plant to be laid off and the abandonment of the facility. In 1986, after NASA had awarded the Space Shuttle booster contract to Morton Thiokol of Utah, Aerojet sued the State of Florida, exercised its options and pulled out of South Florida for good. The company sold most of its land holdings to the South Dade Land Corporation for $6 million. After unsuccessfully trying to farm it, the corporation sold it to Florida for $12 million. County and federal courts were kept busy for years with lawsuits between Aerojet, Dade County and the State of Florida.
After losing the Shuttle contract in 1986, Aerojet later traded its remaining 5,100 acres in the wetlands of South Dade for 55,000 acres of environmentally sensitive land belonging to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Nevada. Those 5,100 acres surrounding the factory site are now controlled by the South Florida Water Management District
The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) is a regional governmental district that oversees water resources from Orlando to the Florida Keys. The mission of the SFWMD is to manage and protect water resources by balancing and improving w ...
and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is a Florida government agency founded in 1999 and headquartered in Tallahassee. It manages and regulates the state's fish and wildlife resources, and enforces related laws. Officers a ...
as a nature preserve. The Aerojet signage still remains for both the road and canal, and although weather-damaged, most of the facility's buildings remain intact. The Nevada property was sold by Aerojet in 1996 to be used for the unbuilt planned community Coyote Springs, Nevada.
The AJ-260
The Aerojet 260 was an experimental solid rocket motor constructed and tested in the mid-1960s by Aerojet for NASA.
History
In the 1960s the 260 was initially designed to test the feasibility of solid rocket motors for space exploration, includ ...
-2 rocket motor remains in the silo to this day. In 2013, the massive shed structure covering the silo was dismantled and the silo covered with several 33 ton concrete beams.
The facility was the subject of documentaries ''Space-Miami'' and ''Aerojet Dade: An Unfinished Journey''. An urban exploration
Urban exploration (often shortened as UE, urbex and sometimes known as roof and tunnel hacking) is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment. Photography and historical inte ...
visit to the site in 2007 was also featured in the documentary '' Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness''.
EPA Superfund sites
Aerojet's manufacture, testing and disposal methods led to toxic contamination of both the land and groundwater
Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidat ...
in the Rancho Cordova area, leading to the designation of a Superfund
Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the Environmental Protection Agen ...
site. Solvent
A solvent (s) (from the Latin '' solvō'', "loosen, untie, solve") is a substance that dissolves a solute, resulting in a solution. A solvent is usually a liquid but can also be a solid, a gas, or a supercritical fluid. Water is a solvent for ...
s such as trichloroethylene
The chemical compound trichloroethylene is a halocarbon commonly used as an industrial solvent. It is a clear, colourless non-flammable liquid with a chloroform-like sweet smell. It should not be confused with the similar 1,1,1-trichloroethane, ...
(TCE) and chloroform
Chloroform, or trichloromethane, is an organic compound with formula C H Cl3 and a common organic solvent. It is a colorless, strong-smelling, dense liquid produced on a large scale as a precursor to PTFE. It is also a precursor to various re ...
and rocket fuel by-products such as N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) and perchlorate
A perchlorate is a chemical compound containing the perchlorate ion, . The majority of perchlorates are commercially produced salts. They are mainly used as oxidizers for pyrotechnic devices and to control static electricity in food packaging. ...
were discovered in drinking water wells near Aerojet in 1979. Since then, two State agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
have been working with Aerojet to ensure that the company cleans up pollution caused by its operations at the site. Under state and federal enforcement orders, Aerojet installed several systems on the borders of its property to pump out and treat contaminated groundwater. Aerojet has also conducted a number of removal actions for onsite soils, liquids, and sludges. In 2003, groundwater sampling data revealed a plume of contamination extending northwest under Carmichael.
Discovery of TCE contamination at the Sacramento facility also led Aerojet to look into possible contamination of the groundwater at Aerojet's Azusa facility, where much of the testing of JATO's and Rocket engines was conducted before those operations were moved to Sacramento. In 1980, it was announced that there was TCE contamination in the groundwater at Aerojet's facility in Azusa in a hearing chaired by State Senator Esteben Torres. In 1985, it was declared a Superfund Site by the EPA as San Gabriel Superfund Site II and the cleanup done under the Baldwin Park Operable Unit. In 1997, it was also discovered that there was also NDMA and Ammonium Perchlorate contamination in this plume and that Aerojet was once again labeled a Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) in this action. Aerojet sold this facility in 2001 to Northrop Grumman Corporation.
Aerojet's disposal of toxic material occurred 20 years prior to the establishment of a provisional perchlorate RfD limit of 0.0001 mg/kg/day in 1992 (to have been achieved by all companies by 1995). This limit was increased to 0.0009 mg/kg/day in 1998, and prior to the results from NAS studies, the limit was reduced to 0.00004 mg/kg/day in 2002. The NAS studies disputed the 0.00004 limit, and recommended its current limit of 0.0007 mg/kg/day.
Products
Rockets
* Aerobee
* Aerojet General X-8
See also
* Scout (rocket)
The Scout family of rockets were American launch vehicles designed to place small satellites into orbit around the Earth. The Scout multistage rocket was the first orbital launch vehicle to be entirely composed of solid fuel stages. It was also ...
– Aerojet manufactured the "Algol" first stage of this USAF/NASA orbital launch vehicle
* Bristol Aerojet – joint venture in the UK with Bristol Aeroplane Company
* Robert Truax
* Sea Dragon (rocket)
* Aquarius Launch Vehicle
Aquarius is a launch vehicle concept designed for low-cost by Space Systems/Loral to carry small, inexpensive payloads into LEO.
Concept
The vehicle was primarily intended for launching bulk products, like water, fuel, and other consumables, tha ...
References
External links
*
Aerojet Rocketdyne website
GenCorp website
Google Maps view of the Florida facility
{{GenCorp
Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings
Aerospace companies of the United States
Defense companies of the United States
Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States
Rocket engine manufacturers of the United States
Manufacturing companies based in California
Defunct technology companies based in California
Companies based in Sacramento, California
Manufacturing companies established in 1942
Technology companies established in 1942
Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2013
Technology companies disestablished in 2013
1942 establishments in California
2013 disestablishments in California
Superfund sites in California
Water pollution in the United States